Description

The Exceedingly Rare True First Edition of Moby-Dick

The true first edition of Moby-Dick, preceding the New York
(Harper & Brothers) one-volume edition by about four weeks.
Three twelvemo volumes (7.4375 x 4.8125 inches; 189 x 122 mm.).
viii, 312; iv, 303, [1, blank]; iv, 328 pages. Complete with
half-title in Volume I (no half-titles called for in Volumes II and
III).

Early twentieth-century green cloth. Covers with single blind rule
border, spines ruled in gilt and blind and lettered in gilt. Pale
yellow endpapers. Spines very slightly faded, light rubbing to
corners and spine extremities, upper corner of rear cover of Volume
III bumped, affecting the upper corner of the text block, with a
slight crease to the upper corner of the last eight leaves (pp.
[313]-328), free endpapers very slightly browned. Some light foxing
and occasional marginal soiling. Volume I with two tiny tears to
the outer margin of the title leaf, leaf D4 (pp. 55/56) creased,
just affecting a couple of letters, several leaves poorly opened, a
few tiny marginal tears. Volume II with a tiny piece missing from
the upper edge of the title leaf, faint stain to the last two
gatherings (pp. 289-[304]), most noticeable on the last leaf.
Volume III with a paper repair (measuring approximately
one-and-a-half by one-and-a-half inches) to the lower gutter margin
of the title, not affecting any text, a few tiny marginal tears,
faint intermittent staining to the outer margin, heaviest in the
last three gatherings. A very good copy.

"The English edition, The Whale, Bentley, London, 3
vols....was published October 18 against the American November 19.
This edition was set up from Harper proof-sheets, which were edited
to some extent by Bentley, without Melville's knowledge. The
editing consisted of toning down profanity and some alleged
irreverent references; also, the 'Epilogue' was omitted, which
caused at least one English review to comment on the impossibility
of a first-person narrative, when everyone on the Pequod was
killed by the white whale's attack...Moby Dick is the great
conundrum-book. Is it a profound allegory with the white whale the
embodiment of moral evil, or merely the finest story of the sea
ever written? Whichever it is, now rediscovered, it stirs and
stimulates each succeeding generation, whether reading it for
pleasure or with a scalpel. Within its pages can be found the sound
and scents, the very flavor, of the maritime life of our whaling
ancestors" (Grolier, 100 American).

"This book was expurgated for publication in England, the American
text containing thirty-five passages not included in Bentley's
edition" (Sadleir, Excursions in Victorian Bibliography, p.
339).

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